UNITED NATIONS — The United States on Tuesday demanded the sacking of a UN human rights expert for “noxious” comments claiming there had been a US cover-up over the September 11 attacks.

A d v e r t i s e m e n t

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UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon condemned the comments by Richard Falk, UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, as “an affront” to the victims of the 2001 Al-Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington.

The US ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, called Falk’s views “despicable and deeply offensive” and said she had registered a protest and called for his dismissal.

Falk wrote in his personal blog on January 11 that there are “awkward gaps and contradictions in the official explanations” given for the attacks when hijacked jets crashed into the World Trade Center towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington.